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points by fitblipper 4 days ago | 0 comments

I was seeing the reports from the first pass which said it was almost guaranteed that Lula would not win because of what the results of the first were. I wonder what caused that prediction to fail.

I am glad the son of a failed coup organizer and a trump puppet didn't get elected and am hopeful for Brazils ability to self govern. Breaking free of US financial monopolies (credit cards) gives me hope they'll continue to produce and innovative into a healthier and competitive world market, but I am also tired of Lula being at the helm and wish someone else could step up and take the reigns. When someone stays in power for so long in a democracy it makes me suspicious of the legitimacy of their power. Are they popular because they are good for the country or are they popular because they have the right people with power, influence, and money on their side.

[–] jochem9 4 days ago

Mass protests and voter activation might have tipped the scale towards Lula. There was a rude awakening among mainly the younger populace when Bolsonaro jr managed to get the most votes in the first round.

[–] fitblipper 4 days ago

What does "voter activation" mean in a country that requires that every person who can vote must vote?

[–] ricardobeat 4 days ago

~3 million more people voted compared to the first round. 30 million still didn’t vote. You just pay a fine to put your registration in order for the next time, there are no long term consequences.

[–] dlisboa 3 days ago

Voting is mandatory but people aren't dragged to the polls. If they don't vote they get a small fine, the repercussions are tiny. So participation is still an issue, there were about 30 million people who didn't vote in the runoff, against 33 million in the first round.

[–] 0dayz 4 days ago

Just because you can vote doesn't mean you have to vote on the first candidate or the other one, voting blank or voting arbitrary is genuine options.

So voting activation is to push all those people to not vote blank or arbitrarily.

[–] Machado117 4 days ago

Means +3M voters on the second round. While voting is mandatory no one is forced to vote

[–] chem83 3 days ago

Other than the other points made, 16-17, 70+, and illiterate are granted voluntary suffrage. Some of the activation came from convincing those people to show up and cast a ballot.

[–] NewJazz 4 days ago

* Lula did something unusual, which is win in the second round after trailing in the first. This is a first in Brazilian politics, so simple pattern matchers are surprised.

* Turnout. Made all the difference.

[–] ArcHound 4 days ago

I'm not surprised. If you have one terrible candidate, in the first round you can vote for whomever you like. In the second round, however, you need to ensure they lose, so you vote for the opposite party, whomever they might be.

[–] Twisell 4 days ago

France here might disagree. If you have an overly scattered left wing by voting whomever in the first round... you end up with a macron flavored moron as the sole non far-right option in the second round and have to deal with this shit for the next five years.

[–] ArcHound 4 days ago

Yes, for sure, it's not a serious model. But I've observed exactly this scenario a couple of times, so it tracks well for me.

[–] nkmnz 4 days ago

The only way for the far right to win the second round is to end up against Mélanchon, so what you write is totally in line with what Le Pen would want you to propagate.

[–] chernobogdan 4 days ago

There were 10 presidential elections in Brazil after the post-1988 constitutional system, with 2 of those decided in the first round.

8 is a really small sample to consider it as unusual, plus the reversal was not that huge 1.8%

[–] NewJazz 3 days ago

Right, but simpler pattern matchers don't always consider that.q

[–] Taniwha 4 days ago

There were lots of candidates in the first round, neither of today's candidates got 50%+1 so they had a runoff, all the voters from those other candidates were forced to pick one of the two

[–] rsynnott 4 days ago

> I was seeing the reports from the first pass which said it was almost guaranteed that Lula would not win because of what the results of the first were. I wonder what caused that prediction to fail.

Those weren't, as far as I can see, real predictions; they were people saying "the runner up in the runoff has never won, therefore the runner up in the runoff _cannot_ win". Which is fairly ridiculous; it's a _tiny_ sample size.

[–] culi 3 days ago

Well the first round was extremely close and so was the second one where he only won by 3.5 points. The 1st round loser winning the 2nd round is unprecedented but shifts of that magnitude are not. The margin only shifted by 5 points.

Also I think Lula's campaign successfully highlighted Meta's election interference to the voting base which energized a lot of supporters to turn out

[–] ninjagoo 4 days ago

> I wonder what caused that prediction to fail.

A lot of media outlets have been fingering the outage of some data centers due to kinetic action for a worldwide decline in divisive rhetoric, potentially impacting democratic processes.

[–] spwa4 4 days ago

Facebook/Meta openly supporting Bolsanaro and sabotaging Lula probably mattered a lot more. Here's them acknowledging funny business:

https://mronline.org/2026/10/16/meta-acknowledges-the-reduce...

[–] senderista 4 days ago

This has been widely discredited.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9y7l0pm8jkko

[–] ShinyLeftPad 1 day ago

Cloudflare misunderstanding was discredited but there are other sources than just cloudflare: https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/reform-figures-se...

[–] aswegs8 4 days ago

Ha! I knew it. That was way too unlikely. But it was a great narrative. Kudos to Selenskyj.

[–] ShinyLeftPad 1 day ago

Don't mistake debunking Cloudflare graph for debunking that russian troll bots were affected, because they were: https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/reform-figures-se...

[–] bluealienpie 4 days ago

This far less popular than United 24 which is a propaganda outlet disguised as a news site. People believe what they want to hear.

[–] locknitpicker 4 days ago

> This far less popular than United 24 which is a propaganda outlet disguised as a news site.

What are smoking? If you bother to check, United24 clearly describes itself as "The official fundraising platform for collecting donations to support Ukraine."

[–] pknerd 4 days ago

The world is more worried about US/CIA bots(US social sites) than any so-called Russian bots

[–] goobatrooba 4 days ago

European here, that's absolutely false in Europe.

[–] rebolek 4 days ago

Ah, speaker for the world!

[–] pknerd 4 days ago

Speaker for the region where elections and politics is manipulated by external forces

[–] defrost 4 days ago

Is there a country where elections and politics are not manipulated by external forces?

[–] pknerd 4 days ago

Middle East, because they conduct no elections :-)

[–] atoav 4 days ago

Not everything you'd want to be true, is. Checking makes the difference, you just need to do it.

[–] Bassilisk 4 days ago

If that were true it would have diminished Lula "support" as Lula is strongly preferred by Russia due to his anti-US and anti-NATO stance.

[–] NewJazz 4 days ago

Lula is neither anti-US, nor is he anti-NATO. He is against a single country having hegemony over the globe, against US meddling in Latin American elections (including with trade policy as of late), and against huge defense budgets.

[–] geysersam 4 days ago

Why do Americans accept that their democratic country is actively intervening in other countries elections? It's grotesque. The US security establishment has been allowed to run amoc for decades and they have destroyed the values that made the US country that people admired across the world.

[–] NewJazz 3 days ago

The people in charge didn't run on this. Most of the real orchestrators are appointees, anyway. They're about to get a reality check fairly soon. I wouldn't be surprised if Hegseth were sacrificed. Rubio, the real brains behind the operations, will probably hold on somehow.

If Americans elect Rubio after all this, or resoundingly reelect a Republican congress, I think you have a better claim.

Tl;dr they don't accept it, but they keep getting tricked

[–] _fizz_buzz_ 4 days ago

That feels like an analysis stuck in 2015.

[–] InfiniteLoup 4 days ago

To me it often if feels like South American countries themselves are stuck in an eternal pendulum of electing corrupt left-wing populists after corrupt right-wing populists and swinging back again.

[–] t-3 3 days ago

That's representative democracy. There's not really any practical ways to delegate power without enabling corruption, so corruption is more or less inevitable without radical levels of transparency and public oversight.

[–] dv_dt 4 days ago

Im not sure the strategic calculation is as simplistic as that

[–] eptcyka 4 days ago

Would a Trump puppet not also be anti-NATO and pro-Putin?

[–] EdwardDiego 4 days ago

That's a bingo gif.

[–] falkenstein 4 days ago

hey i see what you did there. so funny

[–] marcalc 4 days ago

"son of a failed coup organizer" is an absolute false statement which only serves those in power to criminalize dissent and have been seen in many authoritarian regimes during their implementation.

[–] whycome 4 days ago

> "son of a failed coup organizer" is an absolute false statement

But, his dad:

> Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is serving a 27-year prison sentence after being convicted by Brazil's Supreme Court for plotting a coup following his 2022 election defeat

I don’t see how to read it any other way. Explain?

[–] mike_hearn 4 days ago

The Brazilian Supreme Court is completely out of control and its judgements mean nothing. It's not like the American Supreme Court that only arbitrates constitutional matters. Look at the recent history of it and you'll find judges on it using the police as their personal enforcers, randomly imprisoning people who criticize them, high levels of outright corruption and Lula's personal lawyer being appointed to it. Think about it: would the US Supreme Court personally convict someone of a crime? No, they only hear appeals, there is no such thing as someone directly imprisoned by a single supreme court judge in America. The Brazilian court also interferes directly in elections - in this case one of them ordered that voting be extended for hours after it had already been closed and the ballot boxes sealed for no good reason.

Basically, in Brazil the Supreme Court appears to be directly in charge of the police, and they can and do issue whatever "rulings" they want to impose their will on whatever or whoever they feel like, with no appeals possible. Including elected politicians.

I expect this HN thread to be a disaster zone of badly informed takes, but the Brazilians I know consider Brazil to be a dictatorship and this election to have been stolen. It's a sad day.

[–] stkdump 4 days ago

There is this narrative I heard from a Brazilian near me that the Supreme Court in Brazil is political and rotten to the core.

[–] greiskul 4 days ago

Check this article, use Google translate if needed https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punhal_Verde_e_Amarelo

The Supreme Court in Brazil can be as rotten of political as it wants, to make a plan to assassinate political rivals is just completely unacceptable.

And before someone tries to defend the bolsonaros by saying they were not involved in this, don't use a defense that they themselves did not use. The defense that Flávio Bolsonaro said about the incident was "thinking of killing someone is not a crime".

[–] nl 4 days ago

> "son of a failed coup organizer" is an absolute false statement

How so?

I don't really follow Brazilian politics, but Jair Bolsonaro was found guilty by the Brazilian Supreme Court of:

participation in an armed criminal organization, attempted violent abolition of the democratic rule of law, attempted coup d'état, qualified damage, and deterioration of protected heritage property.[1]

Flávio Bolsonaro is Jair Bolsonaro's son. "attempted coup d'état" is a failed coup.

There don't seem to be any serious questions that the process was fair and that the Supreme Court was impartial (I mean there are always Trumpian accusations of bias, but I mean ones with any evidence at all).

The only part I could see possible disagreement with is organizer I suppose? But I must be missing something.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_for_the_2022%E2%80%93202...

[–] georgemcbay 4 days ago

> "son of a failed coup organizer" is an absolute false statement

Jair Bolsonaro was tried and convicted of organizing a coup.

Flavio Bolsonaro is his son.

Where's the false part?

[–] locknitpicker 4 days ago

> "son of a failed coup organizer" is an absolute false statement

What do you have to say about this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022%E2%80%932023_Brazilian_co...

[–] pestatije 4 days ago